Thread by @someshjha7

So, SBI chief economist Soumya Kanti Ghosh & IIM Bengaluru prof Pulak Ghosh (the architects of the payroll data) write an opinion piece in BS today tearing apart the NSSO's job report. Some fact-check:

business-standard.com/article/opinio…

Claim: PLFS is a two-year pilot started in July 2017

Fact: PLFS was successfully piloted in 2011-13 during 8 successive quarters in 3 states - HP, Odisha & Gujarat. The present survey report cannot be termed as a pilot.

Claim: Larger weights assigned to households with higher education level above 15 yrs...Thus, past NSSO data not comparable.

Fact: A standing committee has formed a sub-group to look into impact on survey results due to changes in methodology but wants the report to go as it is.

Claim: Publishing the results for 15-29 years age group may result in erroneous unemployment numbers. Many pursue education in this age and will likely remain unemployed.

Fact: If they pursue education over jobs, they are not treated as unemployed but out of the labour force

Claim: Meaning of employment is changing in gig economy. If a surveyor asks “are you employed”, the immediate answer would be no as employment means fixed monthly salary.

Fact: NSSO takes into account daily wage, casual and regular wage workers. So, all kind of jobs are covered.

Claim: This is the fallacy of employment surveys so there is a need to move to payroll data.

Fact: The authors should have disclosed that they worked at the behest of the govt to produce the payroll data based on EPFO, ESIC, etc. Experts have already punched holes into it (1/2)

...Besides, the payroll data cant be compared to surveys. Payroll data can show job creation but NOT key elements necessary to frame policies: unemployment rate, labour force participation rate, etc. For India, as ex-Niti Aayog V-C @APanagariya said: NSSO surveys are d best (2/2)